


Equilibrium

by royalwisteria



Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, introspective snapshot, prequel before book/movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-20
Updated: 2013-04-20
Packaged: 2017-12-08 23:31:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/767362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/royalwisteria/pseuds/royalwisteria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What Fili might want (though what does it actually mean to <i>want</i>) is to not be who he is, but to be Kili instead with dark hair, dark eyes and half the responsibility.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Equilibrium

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jeny](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Jeny).



> sorry this is weird, Jeny, and kind of depresing. I promise I'll write you something better later, like a bodyswap fic or something, and it will be fluffy and beautiful. I promise.

It’s not that he’s unhappy. What is unhappy, anyways? A state lacking that indefinable happiness? Fili doesn’t believe in being unhappy, because that’s a dead end, nowhere to go, nothing to do, nothing to live for. He doesn’t want that and he doesn’t label himself in any way that would box him in to one emotion for years and years to come. He thinks of it as more of a equilibrium between want and lack, the idea that what he wants is what he lacks and this will be something that will continue on through the rest of his life. What he wants he cannot have; what he wants he will never have; what he wants is impossible.

 

Fili doesn’t cry, he’s not the crying type, really; it’s yet another box he doesn’t want to be placed into, _emotional_ , which is tied to women, even though with his mother the way she is, he doesn’t believe that woman equals emotional or that men aren’t emotional. He also has his uncle after all, burning passion and all emotion where his mother is logic cool. Fili is like neither of them, he’s not much like his father earlier, or the other uncle he never got to know. He’s not really a combination between them either; Dis never feels the need to cry, because why cry when there’s shit to be done, and Thorin doesn’t cry because crying is not something for Kings to do, a title yet to return to him.

 

So sometimes Fili sits on his bed. Sometimes he stops himself from thinking, from seeing, hearing, having to talk: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, all leading to a state of nothingness. That’s what his equilibrium gets, a state of nothing where he can’t think or be anything at all, because everything in this world is evil and leaves him with nothing.

 

There is only one thing in this world that he wants, but Fili doesn’t know what it is. He doesn’t like talking about it, either, locking it up with infinite locks in a corner of his mind and pretends it doesn’t exist. Like the see, hear, speak, it exists in a state of absolute nothing. This is what Fili is. Nothing. At all. He is nothing, nothing, _nothing_ and that makes him everything all at once.

 

It’s overwhelming, sitting on his bed and staring across the room at a blank, dark wall underneath a mountain. Expectations sit on his shoulders, vultures waiting for him to drop off before devouring him. He is to be great, he is to be King after his uncle, he is to be an excellent warrior. He works endlessly, not thinking at all, swing after swing, muscles cording thickly on his arms, legs, staying trim as he possibly can.

 

He is to be everything. He is primed for this, for Kingship, and Kili is not. Kili is not any of this, easy-going Kili, sharp eyes, full smile, even teeth. His hair is Durin dark; Fili is the golden child of his fathers and sometimes he wonders who they all love more: Fili, who doesn’t look at all of the Durin line and Kili, who is blatantly Durin. His dark coloring, the acuity of his mind, _he_ should be King. Not Fili, not himself, and he’s sure that people will always think that it’s a shame that Fili was the elder child. It would have been better to have a strong Durin line, to have the dominant physical traits coming through. It is no matter that Fili is pretty good with a blade; Kili is one of the best bowmen of their people.

 

When he was a dwarrow, Fili loved having a sibling. He loved his little brother, the five year difference almost nominal compared to the age they would grow to be, but now he is bitter. Now he almost wants to have no siblings, just be by himself and not have the chance to see the life he could have lead if he was not the heir.

 

Sometimes Kili receives the same lessons, though they are easier on him, softer, more tender. Fili tries not to store any resentment because of this, but each battle is harder than the last. It is more difficult because of the way Fili himself loves his brother, sets Kili above himself, is ready to believe that Kili should be the one, not Fili.

 

That is, perhaps, part of what he wants, part of why he has locked it so tightly up. It includes Kili, everything always includes Kili, but Fili will not name anything. Maybe it’s not ‘will’, though, implying that he knows what he wants to name but refraining from doing so from stubbornness, from determination, because he doesn’t know. So, Fili cannot name anything, because he doesn’t know what it is he would term it as, locked up, dusty, secret, dark and dirty. It is not love, obsession, regret, simple bitterness: all of these are not encompassing enough. Nothing ever is simple, in Fili’s life, eking a life under a mountain that is not the Durin birthright, told from a young age _your life will be better_.

 

Fili does not believe that. It’s a lie, a lie told by those who believe it to be a truth. His life will not be better, because his life will never be centered the way his mother’s was, his father’s, uncle’s. They all experienced Erebor, the mountain they long for, sing off, a peak arching into the sky with flat hills stretching out around. Proud, he thinks it is, a trait of their people, standing taller than everything above them from dint of will.

 

But, in the end, that is not his home. He has no home, except perhaps the one he finds in dwarves, friends, family; a home that is not constant, moving constantly, infirm, unstable. Kili is the only one who would understand, but he fervently believes in Erebor, their lost home, that Fili does not dare speak of it. This knowledge burns inside him, is hot no matter how many buckets of cold water of reality he tries to douse it with. Reality, of course, being the fact that he has no other choice. This is his destiny.

 

 _Your life will be glorious_ , he is told. _You will accomplish great things_. He wants to ask what these great things are, if these are great things he wants, or if this is part of what is expected of him. But none of these questions fully formulate in his mind and he smiles fiercely as is expected of him.

 

It is terribly lonely. It is more than lonely; Fili is always told to be aware of who he is. Even when alone in his room, when he is thinking of nothing, there is a faint awareness poking at him, asking him who he is, to repeat it back, to know that he is to be special.

 

Fili is surprised he has not gone mad yet, but he knows he has Kili to thank for that. Kili, the dark Durin beauty, the first to laugh with Fili not far behind because being left behind is terrifying. Kili, his brother, almost his twin though they couldn’t look less different, has always been there by his side. Although he was absent from a great deal of what Fili had to learn, Kili is still his brother and they used to snuggle under the same blanket when sleeping, and they used to hold hands when they walked through the halls, Fili unconsciously leading him and Kili’s hand had been smooth when they were younger, though eventually his hands grew callouses from bows and then his hand was bigger. Fili’s not sure when that happened during the blur of their dwarrowhood, when it became that Fili was taller than him, when Fili could lean on his shoulder like he does.

 

Kili is his anchor. He steadies Fili without even realizing it. He interrupts Fili’s nothingness without a thought, smiling brightly, and it’s heartbreaking because Fili would love to be Kili, to reverse their lives for a day. Kili can do what Fili cannot, he can do all those little things that Fili can only notice from a distance, like cook. Who knew? While Fili is learning about mining methods, trailing his uncle around, Kili takes trips to the kitchens and learns how to bake bread, learns how to marinate meat, how to artistically arrange food on a plate. All Fili knew about cooking was that sometimes you need heat to cook things and that he appreciated an eye to color when it comes to a plate of food, but he couldn’t learn. It wasn’t for him, but no one had put a tag on Kili’s back, a direction for him, like they had for Fili.

 

At night, Kili comes by his room, tapping on the door rhythmically, _knock-knock-knock_ and Fili answers, dragging himself off his bed to meet his brother. It’s always a whispered phrase of good meanings and intentions, though Kili always ends up coming inside, sitting next to Fili, a hand on his shoulder, then to soothing circles on his back and then they stop. It’s just a hand on his back as Fili stares across to the wall. Light flickers, dances across surfaces, on the smooth lines of Kili’s face. His beard has not truly started coming in yet, though Fili thinks that he doesn’t have long to wait for stubble to come in.

 

“I love you, brother,” Kili says. His voice is softer than anything Fili knows, smoother than the finest cut jewel. “I love you.” With what can Fili respond to this adoration? With what can he show how lonely he is to the one person who depends on him to not be lonely himself?

 

“I love you, too,” is all that’s in Fili’s arsenal, though each word is pulled from his throat by tweezers, pinching the end of his tongue. Kili’s head comes to rest on his shoulder, dark hair soft on Fili’s neck, and he wonders if it’s his imagination that he can feel the soft exhale when Kili breathes.

 

It’s not. He _can_ feel it, gentle on his collarbone, hair almost ticklish below his ear, and this happens way too often, Kili sneaking into his room late at night and being someone Fili can't stand but needs all at once.

 

“I would,” Fili says, word still being forced from him, teeth almost chattering, “give anything to take your place.”

 

Kili’s laugh is soft, head digging further into the place where his neck meets his torso. “That’s funny, brother, because I would do anything to take your place, all just to keep you from suffering.”

 

It’s an odd thing, their love, possessive, needy, grabbing and never satisfied. Fili will not be satisfied by what Kili can give him because it’s never enough, nothing is enough for Fili’s insatiable soul. They are too different to be compatible, in looks and in spirit, though maybe that’s just a means of perspective.

 

Kili leaves with a kiss pressed to Fili’s forehead, a hand running through blonde hair as he presses another chaste kiss to lips and then gone. Fili is left grasping in his empty room, knowing that although he is nothing and everything at once, to Kili he is simply Fili: brother and the only dwarf he needs in the entire world. This is all Fili wants, too, to be brother and only one for Kili.

 

Somehow they'll work it out.


End file.
